The problem with exploration in ME1 was that it didn't make any sense. It's like BioWare was trying to incorporate old D&D RPG mechanics into a futuristic Sci-Fi shooter/RPG and well...It just didn't fit. Roving all over planets so you can hack some satellite so you can procure lvl 4 Cryo ammo (WTF?) Nevermind the fact you were on a time sensitive mission to SAVE THE UNIVERSE. You didn't have time to dilly-dally around surveying planets for bloody mineral deposits. Oh, but you needed credits to buy gear you say. WHY? A Specter had to buy his or her own Specter only weapons? WTF? Helllooo, saving the universe here, just give me the stuff!

Now in ME2, at least surveying planets to gain resources for your own on ship tech lab to make upgraded weapons and armor 'n such kinda makes sense (why Cerberus couldn't just do this for you, I dunno.) But, surveying planets in ME2 was the most goddamnist boring grind I've ever experienced in a video game short of EVE Online. Surely BioWare could have ingeniously figured out a way for players to upgrade the hardware of Shepard an Co. other than the God awfully boring planet survey mechanic.

To make matters worse BioWare completely redid game mechanics for ME2 that only needed minor tweaking from ME1. Where's the skill tree? Why are Biotics nerfed?

I'd say it was a good review. He didn't really search for things to pick apart, he just picked apart the few problems the game has. He also wasn't always insulting the game, it was more of pointing things out. I do think he liked the game overall. It's probably a contender for his "least crap game of the year" award.

Pretty good Yahtzee review as always. I still can't stand anything to do with the Mako and planet exploration in the original Mass Effect but frankly I'd take the mineral scanning over the former just cause it's the lesser of two evils to me at least. Will be interesting to see where Bioware is going with that Hammerhead hover-tank.

Can't understand how he could take a jab at the games difficulty. Granted the Infiltrator is one of the easier classes to master but playing it on casual or normal, which I think Yahtzee did indeed play it on, is laughable (but oh so satisfying when you reload the Widow after making a kill). I wanna see the vein in his head pop when he dies over and over again on insanity.

You know if you sex up Tali, in the next game she's going to contract an virus and die from a poor immune system...right?

lol

Nope. And you know Quarians can't get virus's from humans, right? Only from Turians.

That's not true. On Illium there's a conversation between a Quarian and Turian talking about the Quarian's human ex-boyfriend who wanted to go "Natural". It's possible to miss the part about the Quarian's boyfriend being human though.

I'm at least glad that explained why the Quarian immune system was so fragile and why they didn't settle another world. That never made any sense in the first Mass Effect. The Quarians seemed like Battlestar Galactica knockoff, but it's not like there weren't other planets in the Galaxy that couldn't be settle in the 300 years after the Quarians left their homeworld.

Well, getting sick and getting a virus aren't the same thing. Tali explained it as akin to an allegric reaction, and Mordin, during one of his safe-sex talks (on Garrus, I believe) said that 'injesting' dextro-amino-acid material would cause anaphylatic shock. Basically, there bodies act like their infected with something for a week or more, though it can be much worse and our-right kill them.

And indeedie. 60 years to re-adapt to their homeworld without the suits, or 600 years on a new world. I can certainly see why the Quarians are eager to return to their homeworld.

MiracleOfSound:I never really get why Yahtzee complains about games being too easy when there are multiple difficulty settings.

He should try not issuing commands to the AI on Insanity and see how far he gets...

@MiracleOfSound: I agree with Yahtzee here. Playing a game on "Normal" difficulty should result in an experience that is reasonably challenging to a first time player without becoming overwhelming. Both "Mass Effect" games actually suffer from their non-linear game play in this aspect. Situations do not become harder or easier (i.e. add or remove enemies, change environmental factors, etc.) depending on your level, which gives the game difficulty a very "flat" feel.

Naheal:Snipers don't need teammates. In fact, they have this disgusting tendency to GIVE YOUR POSITION AWAY. I'm more just impressed that you had the patience to be a sniper in that game.

@Naheal: If you got by on Veteran or above without your team and mainly using a sniper rifle, my hat is off to you. I didn't use team commands much my first play through but on Hardcore mode I don't think I could have won without them.

Now to actually respond to the video... funny! It was great that Yahtzee brought up the difficulty, too bad that he spent so long obliterating relatively minor issues, and I'm disappointed that he didn't mention anything about the game's length. I'm convinced you can beat the game in 8 hours or less.

I thought it was a fantastic game. In the RPG genre the only games this year that may top it off that i can think of are FFXIII (which has received average reviews) and Fallout: Las Vegas.

I agree with wanting more weapons though.

You get a lot more bang for you buck with the powers i think, and i love how the action is more fast paced provided you assign your powers to RB and LB (if playing on xbox).

I liked how you didn't have to grind enemies for XP, you earned it based on your missions.

If you really hate mining, on your second play through go an engineer - his passive ability grants at discount on your research cost - that plus the 50,000 of each resource means you can get away with very little planet scanning time.

How in the fuck did you manage to waste money on EVE? You can pay for the game with IN-GAME MONEY DAMMIT.

That being said, the moment I saw the resource mining in ME2, I was like, "well this is incredibly dull, but it certainly beats sitting in an asteroid belt shooting rocks then getting blown up by pirates". Would be superb if EVE stole that particular mechanic of choosing which part of a rock to shoot for shiny goodies, because mining in EVE really lets the entire game down. It could use whatever help it could get.

On the other hand, you can't treat EVE as a casual single player game -- it's all about epic, huge-scale pvp, espionage and industrial warfare. Requires real world research on game mechanics (such as what happens when you go into low security space), and joining a like-minded player-run corporation. If you haven't done either of those, it's like expecting to be able to enjoy an NFL sim made by EA or some shit if you've never heard of football, don't know the rules, and don't care about the sport or the players. You won't get it, and you'll regret wasting the time and the money.

Try actually treating EVE as the engaging MMO it is before knocking it down, or concede you did it wrong.

This was a pretty good review. I loved the second game (and I know people complain about plot holes, but most of these complaints aren't researched properly. Wait until Mass Effect 3 when they said they'd explain the bits they've left out, geeze), but Yahtzee got all the bad parts spot on, especially the "Bioware Face", that is so damn true, I've noticed that since the first game.

Yahtzee still said the gameplay wasn't as pristine as it should be and, whilst I loved the gameplay, there's still room for improvement. At least he couldn't deny that it's streets ahead of the first game. I hated pawning all the unwanted crap after every mission. Utterly, utterly boring.

Great review Yahtzee, it's good to see you do what you do best; not necessarily hate a game but pick out all the flaws without holding your punches. I'd wish more reviewers to do this, but then why would people watch Zero Punctuation?

wiredk:Why am I no longer surprised that Yahtzee has latched himself onto machine-farted games.

Oh, and angry that the game has a way to get supplies that doesn't involve a MMO mechanic?

fantastic!

Yahtzee loses his Literary status and has now acquired 10 levels in Corporate Whore.

I'm tired of people like you talking like THAT about Yahtzee, it's because of people like you that he has to say this stuff about video games. Do you not realise that whenever he reviews a game positively, a hundred + people will be unsatisfied and complain, just because he didn't bad mouth it. You realise that just because you don't like a review doesn't mean it's a bad review and certainly doesn't mean Yahtzee has a poorer status as a reviewer because different people have different tastes and frankly, he can't keep up with all of them in every single review.

wiredk:Why am I no longer surprised that Yahtzee has latched himself onto machine-farted games.

Oh, and angry that the game has a way to get supplies that doesn't involve a MMO mechanic?

fantastic!

Yahtzee loses his Literary status and has now acquired 10 levels in Corporate Whore.

I'm tired of people like you talking like THAT about Yahtzee, it's because of people like you that he has to say this stuff about video games. Do you not realise that whenever he reviews a game positively, a hundred + people will be unsatisfied and complain, just because he didn't bad mouth it. You realise that just because you don't like a review doesn't mean it's a bad review and certainly doesn't mean Yahtzee has a poorer status as a reviewer because different people have different tastes and frankly, he can't keep up with all of them in every single review.

Sadly mate, you're banging your head on the brick wall that is the stupidity of the internet.

wiredk:Why am I no longer surprised that Yahtzee has latched himself onto machine-farted games.

Oh, and angry that the game has a way to get supplies that doesn't involve a MMO mechanic?

fantastic!

Yahtzee loses his Literary status and has now acquired 10 levels in Corporate Whore.

I'm tired of people like you talking like THAT about Yahtzee, it's because of people like you that he has to say this stuff about video games. Do you not realise that whenever he reviews a game positively, a hundred + people will be unsatisfied and complain, just because he didn't bad mouth it. You realise that just because you don't like a review doesn't mean it's a bad review and certainly doesn't mean Yahtzee has a poorer status as a reviewer because different people have different tastes and frankly, he can't keep up with all of them in every single review.

Sadly mate, you're banging your head on the brick wall that is the stupidity of the internet.

You're right, it's just you tend to find stupidity on the Escapist very rarely, maybe I haven't been on enough Yahtzee review comments on the site. I'll stick with the devoted posters.

wiredk:Why am I no longer surprised that Yahtzee has latched himself onto machine-farted games.

Oh, and angry that the game has a way to get supplies that doesn't involve a MMO mechanic?

fantastic!

Yahtzee loses his Literary status and has now acquired 10 levels in Corporate Whore.

I'm tired of people like you talking like THAT about Yahtzee, it's because of people like you that he has to say this stuff about video games. Do you not realise that whenever he reviews a game positively, a hundred + people will be unsatisfied and complain, just because he didn't bad mouth it. You realise that just because you don't like a review doesn't mean it's a bad review and certainly doesn't mean Yahtzee has a poorer status as a reviewer because different people have different tastes and frankly, he can't keep up with all of them in every single review.

Sadly mate, you're banging your head on the brick wall that is the stupidity of the internet.

You're right, it's just you tend to find stupidity on the Escapist very rarely, maybe I haven't been on enough Yahtzee review comments on the site. I'll stick with the devoted posters.

Well, I avoid the review video threads generally because of this very problem. But Mass Effect 2 was too awesome to avoid it ;)

Loved the review. Commenting on Zero Punctuation videos always seemed like an exercise in futility to me (By the time you get on there's already 11 pages of people saying every possible thing you could have said- what's the point of adding your two cents?) but I loved this enough to post. To hell with reason.

He actually liked the game! Hoorah! And it was funny! Scanning's probably the biggest flaw- they just haven't figured out how to do the galaxy exploring thing right yet, have they?

The best, BEST thing to do, in my opinion, would be to add on Ship Combat, and have you skim across the planet in low orbit, automatically finding minerals or places you could drop the party for ground missions. And with the occaisonal crazy planet-cyclone or Spaceship-fight to liven it up.

Space combat would really solve the problem of scale he was talking about instantly.

Space combat would really solve the problem of scale he was talking about instantly.

Yeah, I feel the same about posting here.

I got the impression that he really liked it as well. All his (actual) criticisms (nevermind the throwaway jokes) were spot-on as well, though I'd argue they were nitpicking more than reasons to dislike the game. Which he sort of admitted himself as well.

They "sort of" did the space combat with KOTOR but after a while it really got on my tits. I just wanted to go to the next planet and went "oh lord, this shit again" when I had to go into space combat. If they do it right, it might work, but I fear that whatever minigame they stuck in there that doesn't advance the storyline directly, some, if not most, people will find it a drag after about a half an hour. Personally, I didn't mind it that much since you don't need THAT many minerals for the absolutely necessary ship upgrades. The rest is optional anyway.

Xanyr:Good writing? So did you miss the humongous plot holes and failed characterization of the Reapers?

So far the only plot hole I saw was bringing Legion to Tali's loyalty mission after completing Legion's own, which begs the question, "why did you have to fight the geth when at that point, the virus had reformatted all heretic geth into regular geth, which means Legion could've just told them to stand down? Considering all the extra dialogue options you get for bringing Legion to that mission, having him lay waste to so many mobile platforms was confusing at best.

Er, it's pretty obvious Yahtzee went for Miranda. Exposed bra, dry humping with zipper suits? yep, that's Miranda's scene. I honestly don't get the fascination for Tali. You can't exactly call her deeper than Miranda, considering their backstories. On the one hand you have a woman who rails against her genetically engineered perfection by letting her family choose her own path, on the other you have a immunologically challenged nerdgirl whose claim to fame is that her voice actress isn't phoning in her lines. It's like half the Internet gets a nerdgasm over a girl whose face is essentially covered the entire time. And lemme tell ya folks, no matter how smart, funny and intelligent a girl may be, if you fall in love before seeing at least 70% of her face, you may be in for a rude awakening.

YOUR a fan of the game YOR playing on insane. Unless you hate the game there is no point in arguing the fact your a fanboy of it. If i got a chance i would be a fan also.

Enough about how i did that to bug U lets point out your argument and how you never use it to make reviews [if we can still call these reviews] Why would he play on the hardest difficulty to review the game? Thats not only useless to the review but also makes it harder to review cause you have to think "Well since the avarage joe plays normal mode almost 70% [not real figure] of the time i wonder what its like on that difficulty?" as he gets killed by the geth